Bio-separation describes techniques used for determining the molecular state of a cell, or whole organism. Currently, bio-separation is often performed using liquid chromatography, electrophoresis or centrifugation, which achieves separation by transporting an analyte relative to a stationary phase based on a physical or chemical property, such as surface chemistry, size, charge, or mass density. Although these techniques are able to separate analytes with a high resolution they are slow and often difficult to implement.
Another bio-separation technique is linear magnetophoresis. In this technique a very strong magnetic field and field gradient are typically applied to effect separation. However, in known linear magnetophoresis, the magnetic particles often coagulate to form undetectable complexes such as chains, which can make it difficult to perform multiple separations on different particles.
There is therefore a need to address these and other problems and limitations of prior art separation devices and methods.